


Kitty's Day Out

by fadeverb



Series: Leo [30]
Category: In Nomine
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-11
Updated: 2014-01-11
Packaged: 2018-01-08 07:50:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1130148
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once upon a time, Leo rescued a gremlin of Technology. More or less. He finally gets around to checking in on what the kid's been up to lately.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kitty's Day Out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Archangel_Beth](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Archangel_Beth/gifts).



> This is a sequel of sorts to [In Which Two Thieves Are Awesome](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1009212/chapters/2002541), by Archangel_Beth.

On the rare occasion when my partner takes on a job without me, it’s either because the details are so delicate he needs to handle the whole process himself, or he knows I’ll raise a fit if I’m expected to participate. I suspect the job he just disappeared on is the latter. All he told me about it was, “You don’t _like_ Habbalah, Leah, so go rob a library or something to keep yourself occupied and I’ll be back tomorrow.”

Which was condescending enough that I find myself determined to ignore libraries altogether and go do something that he cannot possibly object to with any solid grounds, but that will almost certainly annoy him.

I guess this is how you can tell it’s true love, right?

Zhune left me in a moderately sized city--on the steps of its central library, even--with about seven hundred dollars in cash and firm instructions to stay put. Half an hour later, I’m pulling into the private back parking lot to a minor Theft Tether with slightly less cash and a shiny new sports car. New enough that I don’t dare keep it long, but these things are fun while they last.

I’ve been to this Tether exactly once before. We don’t do a lot of up-and-down travel, and it’s almost always the Chicago Tether when we do. The weather broadcast told me that Chicago’s under a foot and a half of snow right now, but here the temperature’s a brisk forty-something and the sun’s shining so brightly my car-of-the-day glitters.

I let myself in through the Staff Only door at the back, and check the employee break room first. Empty of people, and a quick glance in the fridge shows it’s empty of anything I’d willingly drink. If I wanted to steal someone else’s lunch, I could swipe what looks to be a nice slab of quiche, but why be that much of an asshole to a stranger? Especially with the faint chance that the stranger in question might be the Seneschal.

Who saunters into the room a moment later, and flashes me a smile. Maeve, Impudite of Theft, probably some distinction or another floating around, but the important point is that she’s the Seneschal of this Tether, and thus a tiny, capricious god inside its bounds. “Leah,” she says, “isn’t it? I thought I recognized you on the cameras.”

“More or less right.” I close the fridge, and smile right back. Company manners, and I would not try this around some Seneschals, but rumor and reputation have her being less petty and vindictive than some. “Didn’t think you wanted me taking any of those out on the way in. How’s it going?”

“Not half bad.” She poses in the doorway, as Impudites are so prone to doing, and I might admire her vessel if it were my type at all. “Is Zhune lurking around here somewhere?”

“Nah, he’s off doing something sticky. Thought I’d drop by and see if you had any odd jobs you needed help with, because it’s either that or set something on fire, and people get touchy about that the fifth or sixth time it happens.” This is almost true. I’ve come by for a somewhat more specific reason, but it seldom pays to ask a demon outright for what you want, Lilim only occasionally aside. And I wouldn’t offer work casually to a Balseraph, who’d take it as some sort of secret line of attack... But Impudites, they can be easy enough to work with. Some of them.

“Nothing small enough for a quicky,” Maeve says, and gives my vessel a quick, speculative once-over. I suspect I’m not dressed to her standards. “Except. Huh. You could take my apprentice for a spin. Talk to her about Destroyer shit, like I don’t have experience with. She won’t shut up about _you_ , and she’s been good enough to have earned a treat.”

“Did she ever pick a name?” Apparently she picked a gender, unless it’s only a new vessel that has the baby Calabite using those pronouns now. The last time I saw the demon in question, it was a gremlin in a cat vessel, and then, eventually, a new-fledged Calabite really _into_ its chosen Band. Adorable, inasmuch as demons ever are.

“Sure,” Maeve says, and spins around to let out a piercing whistle through the hallway. “KITTY. Get your ass in here.”

There’s a moment of silence in the speakeasy; this long before the opening hours, no unAware mortal will be inside the building. Then footsteps clatter down stairs and pound across the floor towards us. Not a cat anymore, with that sound.

A girl bursts into view, and skids to a halt in front of Maeve. “I’m here, I’m ready! Do you need me to do something? I’m good to go!” The kid’s a touch shorter than I am, which is unusual, but her vessel’s more mid-teens instead of my _Please believe the ID that says I’m twenty-one years old_ version. A tiny slim figure, with bright pink hair and shredded clothes, adorable in that particular way that--

\--oh.

I am still trying to grapple with the realization that this Calabite looks like my _kid sister_ when she spots me, and goes wide-eyed at her own special realization. Which turns into a hug that I decide not to dodge.

“Leah! You came back!” She gives me a squeeze that’s trying to be fierce, though she hasn’t really got the strength for it, and then backs up, bouncing on her heels like she’s been eating sugar by the spoonful. “Are you doing a job here? Can I help? Did you bring your Djinn? Look at my new vessel, it’s _awesome_!”

Someone needs to put the kid on an exclamation mark quota, but it’s not going to be me. I ruffle her hair (dammit, some memetic quirks are just inescapable) and grin back at her, sharp and sure like I have every ounce of confidence ever doled out to demonkind. “Just look at you, all grown up. I’m just passing through, but we can go on a field trip if you want to tag along for the day.”

“Oh _can_ I? I’ll be so good and I’ll blow up anything you tell me to and I’m learning how to take apart locks even without the exploding part!” She whirls around to turn her enthusiasm on the Seneschal. “Can I?”

“You need a spin outside the city anyway,” Maeve says. Which is a good point; it must be all kinds of fun supervising a corporeally-naive Calabite who has to get out and about every three days while being more or less nailed in place yourself. “Go take a ride together, and pick up something for me while you’re out.”

Kitty loops her arm through mine, and waits in breathless impatience at my side.

“The car I’m running is hot,” I tell the Seneschal, “but won’t be actively in flames for another day or two. Can I drop it off with you when I get back?”

“Sure, I’ll give it a wash.” She waves us out, already looking distracted at the sound of someone dropping through the Tether from above. Maeve has work to do, and we--well, we have some hours to kill. I’ll figure something out.

Kitty makes admiring noises about the car that are enough to warm my heart. Someone’s bringing this kid up right. And because I’m still trying to decide how to walk the fine line between annoying my partner and doing something that gives him a legitimate reason to criticize, I tell the kid, “You can drive if you want.”

“Can I? I’ve been studying manuals and I know _all_ about engines and--”

“Yeah, I said you could, didn’t I?” I toss her the keys, and give her an approving smile when she catches them from the air. “Careful, the clutch is a little fussy.”

Five minutes of lurching later, we have made it three blocks away from the speakeasy, and I’m having all the fun of teaching a teenager to drive a car for the first time.

“It’s so much easier in theory,” Kitty says, head resting against the wheel as we take a moment in a parking lot to go over the finer points of the stick shift again. “It makes me so angry that I can’t do this right. I know how all of this works, I really do!” She tilts her head sideways to stare up at me with wide eyes.

“Hey, I believe you. But there’s a gap between theory and practice, and there’s no way to cross it but run up there and take the leap.” And while it’s not particularly dangerous, I’d rather not end up babysitting a Calabite having a temper tantrum. “So what’s there to get angry at? The car’s fussy, but you need to learn how to deal with fussy cars. It’ll come up again sooner or later, so you want to figure it out now while there’s no pressure. No reason to be angry at yourself. Everyone takes time to learn these things, unless the Boss imprints it right in your head. And even then there are a few kinks.” I bump her in the shoulder with a fist. “You could be mad at me for being a lousy teacher. I should’ve reminded you about the parking brake when we started.”

“I’m not mad at you,” she says, so indignantly it’s all I can do to keep a straight face. “It’s this-- _car_.”

“Tell you what. We need to bring something back for Maeve, right?” I lean over and turn the engine off. “I’ll drive this one back to the Tether, and leave it there. Then we’ll go have a lot more fun than this with cars. Do you have a river around here anywhere?”

She crawls over to the passenger seat by way of my lap. “Sure, one with a bridge and stuff. Why?”

I have to set Kitty out of the way to get back in the driver’s seat. “Let’s talk fuel efficiency.”

#

Two hours later, we’re watching a third SUV sink gently into the water of the river, in a nice quiet spot where no one’s recording what we’re doing or asking awkward questions. (The advantages of an economy that hasn’t fully recovered: it’s entirely possible to find shut-down factories by the river with a nice stretch of concrete for trucks that aren’t there anymore, where no one can see us from the road.) Kitty sits next to me on a flood wall, picking bits of foil off a chocolate egg. “I didn’t mind that one,” she said. “The part where the seat put me up so high over the other cars made me feel big and powerful. Like I could just mow them down.”

“That’s pretty much what SUVs are for,” I say. “But since we’re not Death or Fire, or even the War, we’re not so much into randomly mowing people down. Besides, that makes disturbance, and gets on the news.”

“I saw a news story about that,” Kitty says, and nips off the top of her chocolate egg. “Some old human drove right into the front of a store. Through the window and everything. They didn’t have any good video of the driving in, just a picture of it being there afterward, so it wasn’t very exciting.”

“It wouldn’t be. And it’s unlikely to end well for the driver, even in a sturdy car. If you really want to do serious damage with something like this--” I nod to the sinking SUV, as the setting sun glints off its roof under the water. “--what you want is a car bomb, and a better target. Like a Tether. Something that doesn’t move much, you know the entrances on...”

Then I remember I’m talking to an impressionable kid who’s soaking up my every word with an expression like I’m the Boss herself, here to explain what itty bitty Calabim of Theft should be doing.

“...but that’s really a _Fire_ thing,” I say, “and there’s no style to it, and it gets so noisy that people like Maeve would get upset at you, because then angels might start driving car bombs up to _our_ Tethers. So never mind that.”

Kitty nods rapidly, and then makes a strangled little noise. She waves her hands around, so wildly I grab her belt (and thank god she’s wearing that, because I think if I tried to grab jeans that ripped they might pop right off her) and haul her back before she can plummet into the water.

“Problem?” I ask, and she nods rapidly. “Choking on something?” More nodding.

I slap her hard on the back, and a plastic capsule pops out of her mouth. “Gah! That’s not _chocolate_ , that’s...you can’t eat that at all!”

“It’s not supposed to be edible. It’s the toy inside the egg.” I dissolve the capsule to drop the contents into her hand, a rather neat trick of precise resonance use if I do say so myself. Remembering what I was like at this age, I suspect she’d be more impressed with a big flashy display of power. “Hey, look. It’s a little car. You just need to pop on the wheels and add the stickers.”

Kitty dutifully assembles the toy car. “I prefer the big ones,” she says.

“You and me both.” We take a moment to admire the SUV slipping away beneath the water, almost invisible now. “We’ve probably done enough driving lessons for the day. Let’s work out what to swipe for your supervisor, and find a better far for the way back.”

“Are you leaving already?” She leaps to her feet, wobbling a little on top of the wall. The boots she’s wearing are great for kicking in the shins, but maybe not the best for acrobatic motion. “I thought you could stay for--a while! Days! One day?”

“I’m only here until my partner gets back, Kitty. One day tops, maybe less.”

“You could help me with learning Calabite things,” Kitty says. “I see some coming through the Tether, and I got to ride along with one this one time, but we never really talk about the _good_ stuff. Blowing things up! Looking at things and they just...” She waves her hands dramatically. “Come apart! Right like that! Because we’re that awesome.”

“Sure, we can practice Calabite stuff.” I take a glance around us, but there’s no one in sight, or reason to think they might be soon. “Pick a nice safe target, and give it your best shot. Let’s see where you’re at right now.”

“Okay!” She jitters back and forth on her feet, looking around for a target. It is not, to be fair, a target-rich environment. A lot of bare concrete, the wall we’re sitting on, the gates we opened up to push the SUVs out and a few dry waste pipes pointing at the river. “Here, how about that, right there?”

“Which?” I can’t tell what she’s pointing at, with the way she’s bouncing around. Here’s a kid who’s fast on her feet, or means to be, and she’ll make a great getaway driver one of these days.

“That part of the wall. There’s already a crack in it,” Kitty says. She beams at me. “Watch!”

“Wait just a second--”

The wall cracks down below us. Or more precisely, a crack that’s already there widens, in a tiny murmur of disturbance that’s barely audible even from where we’re standing.

I grab Kitty by the hand, and pull her along with me as I leap from the wall down to the concrete. She squeaks in surprise, and stumbles as we land. “What’s that for?”

“Just being careful.” I turn to look at the wall again. Maybe I’m overreacting, but that did not seem to me like a good place to introduce more instability to a damaged structure.

The wall makes a truly glorious sound as the crack splits further. And I rather enjoy the mighty splash of three giant chunks of wall falling into the river. What’s less fun is the amount of disturbance suddenly echoing out around us.

Kitty and I stare at where that section of wall used to be.

“Oops?”

“Let this be a lesson to you,” I say, “on how sometimes a small hit in the right place can make a big difference.” I swing my arm around her shoulders. “And now, the next lesson: getting the hell out of Dodge when that big difference is likely to call in problems. The kind of problems we’ve run into before.”

“Judgment and Death?”

“I was thinking angels in general, but, yeah. Something like that.”

We’re nearly at the front gates--not locked, but shut behind us to avoid drawing attention--when a car pulls up by the side of the road there. Some of the factories around this neighborhood are still in operation, but on a Saturday evening? No one’s showing up for work right now. I flick a gesture towards the car, and back away from the gate, with an eye towards the factory. Been ages since I had to dodge hostiles inside an abandoned factory. Well. Months, anyway.

Kitty takes an extra second to catch on to the change in direction. Not so long that I had to grab her, but it’s a useful reminder that I’m not running around with my partner, here. Can’t expect a new kid, however enthusiastic and helpful, to have all the habits of working together down to instinct-level reaction time. At least she’s good at paying attention to senior Magpies (and it’s only around someone this young that I’m any kind of _senior_ ), as Maeve’s presumably been teaching her.

I pick a spot in a of stacked pallet skids, one stack having fallen against three other, as a good place to huddle down and watch who’s incoming without being seen ourselves. Plenty of gaps to see through, between the slats, but it’s already enough of an irregular jumble that we shouldn’t be seen through it, if we can keep still.

Kitty’s silent and nearly breathless beside me, hands on her knees as we wait. But she spares a moment to grin up at me, this brilliant smile of pure trust and enthusiasm. Whatever it is that I’m going to do, she expects it to be amazing.

The pressure is a little disconcerting. I’m good at meeting reasonable expectations, or showing up people who expect me to fail. Not sure I can pull out _awesome_ on cue.

Two people stride in through the gates, one carrying a shotgun in a casual way that I’m not sure is legal in this state. (Things I have never bothered to do: research concealed and open carry firearms regulations in various states. Zhune carries the guns, and I let him worry about that.) The shotgun-bearing woman has an angular look that could mean Seraph, though she hasn’t enough of the trademark quirks of motion when she walks for me to be confident in that. Behind her is someone of indeterminate sex with a shaved head and an outfit bought at an army surplus store. They’d better not be with War (or the War? they don’t investigate random disturbance often, but if they have something going in the area and don’t want interference, they might), or we have a problem.

I mean. More of a problem.

The two of them skirt around the building, in a loose point-and-cover formation that’s not regulation military, but more what you get from people who’ve been jumped often enough to watch out for it happening again. So let’s rule out every variation of War, Sword, Judgment, Game... The people who do this kind of thing by the book. That leaves. Huh. An awful lot of Words. About the only ones I’d rule out right now are Animals and Flowers, though I would be quite honestly surprised if either of these two were working for Lust. Not pretty enough.

I rest a hand on Kitty’s shoulder. She tenses as the two maybe-angels walk past the stack of crates, but she’s _still_ , like a kid with some sense. And they’re not looking at the building yet. They’ve got a clean line on the source of the disturbance--which nearly says _yes, angels_ right there, they’re better at that kind of thing than most demons--and they got here fast. So they’re moving straight in to deal with the problem.

“Hey, Kitty,” I say, barely audible and right by her ear, “want to see one of my favorite tricks?”

She nods vigorously.

“Then keep close and quiet.”

I remove an inconvenient skid that’s in our way but not propping up anything fragile. With less reason to be cautious, I’d explain to Kitty how she could tell what’s what. As it is, once our path’s clear I simply bolt for the gate, the kid right behind me.

“We’re just running away?” she asks, once we’re past the walls. Earnest, and trying to hide the disappointment.

“She who hides and runs away lives to run another day. Can you pop the lock on that car?”

“Oh,” she says, and breaks into a new smile as she realizes what I’m asking. “We’re taking their car?”

“See any better ones around?”

“There was that nice sports car at the gas station two blocks back--”

“Sure, but it was a rhetorical question. The lock, Kitty.”

She nods eagerly, and applies herself to the problem at hand. The Seneschal must’ve been teaching her something, because she whips out a set of tools--cheap ones, but sufficient for the work--and gets the lock popped in twenty seconds flat. “And done!” She slides into the passenger seat, and leans over to unlock the driver’s side. “Where are we going next?”

“Scoot over, and keep your voice down. We’re heading out of town. You’ve seen me hotwire a few cars today alone, so go ahead and try it yourself.”

Kitty slides into the driver’s seat. She has crank the seat forward; the previous driver must’ve been the tall woman, who has nearly a full foot of height on my fellow Calabite. “I can do it!”

“Great,” I say, keeping an eye out the window towards the factory. “Let’s get going.”

Kitty starts working on wires. The seconds slip past, as she frowns and mutters to herself and vaporizes a portion of the dashboard. But just some plastic covering, so nothing important, or big enough to cause real disturbance.

“Kitty?”

“Yes, Leah?”

“Might want to pick that up a bit,” I say.

“Working on it!”

I nod, and make some encouraging noises, and watch the people who own this car stride past the factory’s edge. Stressing her out won’t make this go any faster. And if they catch up with us--well, I suppose I can show Kitty some _other_ tricks I’ve learned.

The engine turns over. “Got it!” Kitty chirps, and sits up, putting her hands on the wheel in the ten and two positions. “So now should I--”

“Go go _go_.”

Kitty glances towards me, and her eyes go wide as she sees those two people. Running towards the car. She swears in Helltongue, and hits the gas. The car lurches forward, machinery grinding.

I slam the parking brake down. My fault, that one. Should’ve checked it myself earlier. And _then_ we shoot away from the curb.

The shotgun bangs behind us, and Kitty yelps, glancing back. “They’re--”

“Shooting at us, sure, don’t stress it. Shotgun like that isn’t going to hurt a car like this, and the important thing,” I say soothingly, as we careen towards a T intersection, “is to keep your eyes on the road.”

We run the stop sign, which I expected, but the car swerves left before we can collide with so much as the sidewalk, and the second shot doesn’t even crack the back window, so it’s a pretty good escape all around.

Kitty giggles madly, accelerator floored. “This is great! What next?”

“Head for the highway. We’re leaving town, and we’re not stopping until we find another city large enough to swap cars casually.”

“Do you think Mae would let me run errands? Now that I’ve got practice driving?”

I pull on my seatbelt, shortly before we blast through a red light at an ever increasing speed. “Sure, I don’t see why not. Seatbelt, Kitty.”

#

We get back to the Tether around dawn, in a sporty blue coupe with a long scratch along the left side. (Have we all learned a valuable lesson about paying attention to warning signs in construction zones? We certainly have.) I keep half expecting Kitty to be nodding off at the wheel, or need carrying as we leave the car for the speakeasy.

But she’s not human. She’s as much a demon as I am, and nothing like Katherine, who’d have yawned off hours ago. I mean, she’s nothing like Katherine in a thousand ways aside from being a demon. Kitty’s better at minding what I say, less likely to throw temper tantrums, better at breaking things, worse at setting them on fire...

It’s not a fair comparison in either direction. Even if there’s an odd emotional similarity to walking along with her, hand in hand.

Maeve’s waiting for us in the break room again. I don’t think I’m getting an invite up to any of the more private rooms unless I come up with an exceptional present. “Did you learn anything new?” she asks her apprentice.

I slip my hand out of Kitty’s, and wander a few feet away. I’m not _trying_ to steal the kid. Zhune wouldn’t stand for it, anyway.

“I’m better at driving! I learned how to shift gears, and pass on the highway, and when _not_ to pass on the highway, and talk a cop out of giving you a ticket!”

The last one gets an eyebrow raised at me by the Seneschal.

“It turns out that my little sister forgot to pack her learner’s permit along,” I say, “and I hadn’t realized she was doing ninety. We were apologetic. The cop was very understanding.”

“And if he hadn’t been?” Maeve asks dryly. What, does she think Impudites are the only ones who can sweet-talk humans? Well. Impudites, Balseraphs, Habbalah, Djinn under the right circumstances, Shedim, Lilim with the proper setup... Calabim are kinda the odd ones out when it comes to social gifts, in Theft.

“Then she would’ve found her motorcycle wasn’t running very well when we ditched.” I put on a nice smile. A little apologetic. Almost like the one I used on the cop. “We hit a few houses in another city, and Kitty picked up a present for you. It’s in the backpack.”

Kitty bounces on her heels. “Do you want to see? I picked it out myself!”

“Later,” Maeve says, and shoos Kitty upstairs with instructions to study...something unspecified, and I’m not going to ask. I’ve done enough to interfere with her schedule already, and even if a Magpie ought to be _used_ to that sort of thing, I don’t have a lot of credit built up here. Best not to abuse what I’ve got.

“Thanks for letting me borrow the kid,” I say. “Do you want to keep the latest car? It’s not half so hot as the previous one.”

“I’m good.” She crosses her arms over her chest, leaning back against the wall. “You’re not bad with the little ones. Ever thought about going into management? Or education? Not everyone bothers, but the newbies last longer when they get some instruction.”

“I just do what the Boss tells me to.” I turn away from her to check the employee fridge again. The quiche is gone, the beer’s been restocked. There’s a tuna sandwich down there that looks remarkably old for something that appeared overnight. “Besides, I have a partner. Any babysitting duties are his.”

“Can’t argue,” Maeve says, in a voice that says she could, but doesn’t feel like bothering. “Say hi to that partner of yours for me.”

I tap off a faux salute, the kind of gesture Regan would’ve smacked me over, but it gets a grin from the Impudite. And then I wander out into the too-bright morning to take the car to somewhere open at such an ungodly hour. Coffee shops, twenty-four hour diners, emergency rooms. Zhune will track me down eventually. He always does.

Not sure that I did anything that would annoy him, or that I can claim I’ve been entirely blameless during the last twenty-four hours. It’s probably safest to pretend I’ve done nothing at all. My partner would like, I think, to believe that I can’t get up to anything of interest when he’s not around, except for more trouble.

Sometimes I almost think he’s right.


End file.
